Sixers drop to 2-12 and pick up Paul George injury in loss to Grizzlies

The Sixers dropped to 2-12 after a 117-11 loss to the shorthanded Memphis Grizzlies, following an injury exit for Paul George after he hyperextended his left knee. The disaster season rolls on.

Here’s what I saw.

The Good

— I want to start with some Joel Embiid complaints before we get to the more fun stuff. Frankly, I have yet to see his actions match his words on what he wants to do and be for this team this season. Embiid could do more to get involved on offense if he’s not the guy finishing the possession. Embiid needs to get in the mindset to set an extra screen or crash the offensive glass, and his urgency to get up and down the floor has been minimal.

However, if you were hoping to see an emotional response and an effort from a guy who knew his team’s season was slipping away, I saw that on Wednesday. Embiid appeared to be fighting his own body at times, but the skill is still overwhelming when he has it going. After a decent start, Embiid got the midrange working and did his best to try to shoulder the load as a scorer in the third quarter.

After basically not running the Maxey/Embiid pick-and-roll in the first half, which is quite a choice, the Sixers finally started getting him the ball at the elbows. For the first time all year, Embiid rose confidently into his jumpers and nailed them one after the other. With the shot falling, the Grizzlies had to hug him tight, and Embiid went right back to work at the free-throw line after being skunked there against Miami.

With everyone expecting Tyrese Maxey to come back and show the emotional leader response, it was Embiid who showed up with the intent to try to carry this team over the line. He played more minutes than I would have expected coming in, playing the entire third quarter with Philadelphia in a spot where a loss simply was not acceptable.

Getting a game like this under his belt should hopefully (heavy emphasis on hopefully) let him build some momentum and get back to delivering the regular 30-point performances we’ve seen out of him for years.

— Forget about whether Jared McCain will be the Rookie of the Year, the 20-year-old guard is one of the Sixers’ best players right here, right now. He is really the only guy delivering results every night without finding a way to piss off half of Philadelphia in the process. South Philadelphia dads might even be convinced to sign up for TikTok at the rate we are going.

He looks capable of being a “true point guard” which would help bridge a lot of non-Maxey minutes and banish the old guys to the bench purgatory forever. That’s enough to make me happy without the shooting.

— Guerschon Yabusele simply has to play real minutes for this team. All of their wings have been bad to completely unplayable, so give me the bigger guy with some skill and competitiveness over the headless chickens.

For that matter, give me more Ricky Council IV, at least I know he’s going to try to make stuff happen.

The Bad

— It would be an overstatement to suggest the Sixers have a bad plan schematically because it is rarely clear what the plan is or whether they all agree on it. It used to be that if the Sixers found a play that worked, they would continue spamming that until the opponent proved they could stop it. It was the one redeeming feature of the Doc Rivers era, frankly.

But at least they looked like they had half of a clue on offense for stretches of the game. Their defense is reliant on individual brilliance right now, and they do not possess a ton of that. The Grizzlies had barely any shot-creators available to play and still managed to get through the first level of defense with relative ease, putting the Sixers in scramble mode far too often. That explains, at least on Memphis’ end, the disparity between the two teams in three-point shooting. Half of the Grizzlies’ shots felt like wide-open threes, while the Sixers had to exert a ton of effort to create open looks with what should have been an overwhelming talent advantage.

We’ll get to the “why” of this below.

— There is really not a lot more to analyze beyond the Sixers being completely unable to hit threes. If that doesn’t change, the season is over.

The Ugly

— I simply do not understand what needs to happen for Nick Nurse to start showing some urgency with his lineup decisions. Jared McCain has been good enough to get away with putting him on the floor as the leading man, but it should not be left to a rookie to try to carry a lineup full of bench guys to success.

That would be what I would focus on if the stars who are ostensibly healthy and available looked like anything close to stars right now. We can pile on coaching decisions, lineup choices, poor shooting from role players, and a million other things. But Tyrese Maxey and Paul George were terrible, so it’s not clear how much they would have helped.

If this was the version of Maxey the Sixers were going to get, there is no way he should have been on the floor even considering the dire circumstances. He was only able to give 5.5 minutes of time in the first half, and he was woefully ineffective when he was on the floor. He can’t hit shots, he’s a minus defender, and he struggled to finish at the rim even while playing with better spacing and a better pick-and-roll partner than he had the rest of the year. While Maxey deserves a break for a rusty return game — we afforded that to the other big-name guys — he has been a fairly big disappointment this season, bad context or not.

Then there’s Paul George, who saw the example Tobias Harris set in Philadelphia and decided he ought to up the ante.

The Sixers have gotten almost none of the good parts of the George experience and all of the bad. He’s overdribbling, relying on tough shotmaking, and floating through games anonymously on a regular basis. If Embiid needed to step up and show this game meant something more after a team meeting, then George certainly did too. But he appears to be happy to float on by and expect the other guys to carry him, which isn’t going to be enough to cut it. Outside of the Knicks game where he beat up Mikal Bridges for four quarters, George has looked mostly incapable of beating anyone off of the dribble. And while he has produced plenty of steals on the defensive end, he’s as culpable as the rest of them for poor rotations and poor connectivity.

There is no working around two stars on a three-star team being bad. Tonight, it was Maxey and George. Another night, it was Embiid and George. Maybe they’ll get a good game from all three at some point, but that seems so far away that it basically doesn’t matter. And the problem is getting them on the floor together in the first place.

To add injury to insult, George left the game early in the second half with what looked like an ankle issue and was eventually confirmed as a hyperextension of the same knee that ruled him out to start the season. So at least the continuity problems will probably get even worse in the weeks ahead. We’re not that far from the tanking season becoming a real discussion.

— All the intel and reporting that is out there suggests that Nick Nurse’s job is safe, and I am never going to be a guy who calls for people’s jobs or suggests a coach is the guy responsible for all that is wrong with a basketball team. But it’s hard to look at how this team is set up night after night and conclude that Nurse is having a positive impact on the team.

Has he been handed a poor situation with injured stars and horrid shooting? Yes. But his approach to a lack of stability has been throwing as much shit at the wall as is possible and building exactly zero continuity in the process. Bench units, which are comprised of guys who have been available all year, look like they’re groups of guys who have never so much as spoken to one another, let alone played together before.

It’s not Nurse’s fault Andre Drummond has stunk out loud, but it is his fault that he continues to play Drummond in meaningful minutes against a team playing five-out basketball and bombing away while he’s nowhere close to contesting the shot. It’s not Nurse’s fault Lowry is old, but it’s his fault that he played Lowry more than most other players on the roster rather than trying to give another guy a chance who might hit a three or defend. He looks short on ideas and, outside of McCain, seemingly has to be convinced to play the guys who are actually playing well.

If he’s supposed to be the creative mastermind, no one is seeing it.